I have aphantasia and it always astounds me when I see an article like this, or hear a friend talking about it (about not having it) and realize that their experience of the world is so fundamentally different than my own.
https://lianamscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/f4c55-1_b...
As in: if you look at this image, can you place yourself on a scale of 1 - 5 of with what kind of fidelity you can picture an apple if you try to imagine it?
I'm a 5 for example, and in asking many people this question I've gotten a solid spectrum of answers from 1 - 5. Generally in a single group of a handful of people I'll get several different numbers.
Even this feels like only a partial scale. I can picture what an apple looks like, rotate it in my, and see how light would reflect off of it as it moves.
How about smell? Can you call you mind what it would smell like to slice open an apple and experience that in some sense? Or what it would sound or feel like? I'm curious if it's literally "seeing" or if it's the entire experience of imagining an event.
I'm very adept at conjuring up sound, though. Maybe it doesn't apply in the same way, but I can hear full symphonies and pick out individual instruments and harmonies and the like.
